I reached for it. The leather binding was cracked, as if it had aged beyond time itself. The ink on the cover shimmered—alive, shifting—before settling into stillness.
I hesitated, then opened the first page.
Time is dead… and (*&^) killed it.
A chill slid down my spine. That word... What was it? Something had erased it. Scratched it out of existence. Not inked over, not smudged—it was as if it had never been written at all.
My fingers traced the space where the name should have been. Nothing.
I continued reading.
A power that transcends even the infinite fractals of existence—Time. Killed and manipulated by a force that should not exist. Its power, no… its corpse is being twisted by the One.
The Creator.
What gibberish was this? How could time be dead? How could it have a corpse?
The ink on the page twitched.
Shifted.
The letters unraveled, curling like tendrils of living things, and suddenly—
They spoke.
You.
You are not the Creator. But you are doing its bidding. You will not believe me this time… But at least I will know I have planted the seed of this world's healing.
I slammed the book shut.
My breath came ragged. The words had moved. Not in the way a spell might rearrange a text, not in the way illusions trick the eye.
They had spoken to me.
My fingers trembled as I reopened it—but the passage was gone.
The words lay silent once more, bound by ink and parchment.
No. No, I had seen it. It had addressed me.
I turned the page.
The Great Fracture is a sign of the decay of time. While its unstable power seeps into every layer of reality, the world will remain corrupted. Events will loop—until the end of all. Only a few existences can comprehend the loop.
I am one of them.
And so, I must record every cycle.
Since he came, this world was condemned. I can only pray that, once he leaves… dusk's dying light will shine upon us.
I stared at the final words, my heart pounding.
A record of every cycle.
The world… looping?
The he it spoke of—was it the Creator?
Or was it—
I shut the book.
No. I would not entertain that thought.
Yet, as my hands pressed against the ancient cover, a single phrase etched itself into the back of my mind.
"You will not believe me this time…"
This time.
How many times had I read this before?